Boeing is Using Google Glass to Build Airplanes

Google Glass in Constructing Aircraft Wire Harnesses

Google’s enhanced reality eye wear, Google Glass may have been a big consumer failure but it still has been making its way in the workflows of professionals. In a report of CIO.com, some members of research and technology division of Boeing have stated that they had utilised the original Google Glass in constructing aircraft wire harnesses.

According to CIO, since planes tend to contain enormously messy and complex webs of wires in connecting electrical system, and technicians would have to manually build them out, a painstaking process created on PDF assembly guide seen on a laptop screen. Replacing the computer display with glass, Boeing has stated that it tends to decrease production time for the harnesses by around 25% cutting error rates in half.

The history of Boeing with AR glass dates back to 1995 when it had tested with early head mounted displays and elementary software. Because of the battery, network and size constraints, it was not a practical scheme but due to reduction in cost and exponential jumps in computing power, Boeing can utilise wire-free device such as Google Glass in accomplishing tasks. Jason DeStories, a R&D engineer with Boeing Research and Technology had a demo designed for harness assembly utilising the first openly available Glass units.

Project Juggernaut

The software was named Project Juggernaut by the team though it was not capable of obtaining information from Boeing’s records in real time. In order to attain an enterprise-grade app for Google Glass, Boeing had put out a proposal and had drawn the attention of APX Labs, who was the manufacturer of smart glasses software platform known as Skylight.

They along with the teams produced a higher quality Glass app which Boeing could hand out to their technicians on the assembly floor. The Skylight app seems to function by enabling a Glass wearer to scan a QR code, which tends to pull the wireless harness software and then scan another code in loading the assembly instructions.
Moreover the app also supports Glass voice commands, enabling users to stream what they are viewing to another technician in the case of something unforeseen. The software was said to be in use only with a small number of Boeing technicians as part of a pilot program which had just came to a close.

New Glass – Focused Exclusively on Enterprise Work

However, the interest of Boeing lies in making Glass and similar AR glasses, a feature on assembly floors and probably even on the International Space Station, though one issue it needs to fix is security. DeStories had informed CIO that `for IT to say, “Hey we’re going to let everything work on the network”, we have to ensure we have information security vetted, we have to make sure we know what kind of IT support we are going to need behind it.

These are the question we are answering right now and we feel like we are very close to being on a truly connected solution’. As Google seems to build out an official successor to its original Glass platform, there could be some expectation for Boeing in this regard.

The new Google Glass that is yet to be declared to the public is said to be focused exclusively on enterprise work. Last year images of the device went up in FCC filings and it has been rumoured that the new Glass will be having a larger prism display, together with a faster processor, better battery life along with 5 GHz Wi-Fi provision.

Boeing Patents an Aircraft Engine Run by Lasers and Nuclear Fusion

Boeing Patents for Laser & Nuclear Driven Airplane Engine

Recently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had approved an application from Robert Budica, James Herzberg and Frank Chandler from Boeing, for a laser and nuclear driven airplane engine.Future aircraft could now be powered by lasers and nuclear explosions if Boeing intends to have its way.

The technology would mean that the spaceships and planes would need only a fraction of power for operating as per the recent patent filed by the company. Airplane makers are continuously on the look-outin finding new and efficient options of powering their products and this laser engine seems to be the latest notion by the engineers at Boeing.

The idea patented was to make air travel an efficient one. Presently we have airplanes like the Solar Impulse 2 which uses only solar energy to travel across Pacific and intends going on a world tour. For a long time now, airlines have been attempting to come up with concepts to decrease carbon emissions and nuclear powered airplanes would be great innovation.

The engineers give some insight on how the nuclear powered tend to work. The radioactive material is vaporized by a targeted Laser on them, leading to a controlled Nuclear Fusion reaction with high energy neutrons discharging out.

Boeing Dreamliner Powered by Several Turbofan Engines

Besides the radioactive material, the engine requires very little with regards to external energy. The high energy matter is absorbed which then propels the aircraft forward.As all the nuclear reactions tend to go, it sustains itself.

The uranium 238 which is coated on the interior of the thruster’s wall undergoes nuclear splitting when struck by high energy neutrons that are generated by the earlier reaction. This tends to generate plenty of heat. Heat that is from the fusion chamber is cooled off and directed to a generator which powers the Laser.

All this seems quite convincing on paper though several queries with regards to controlling the nuclear reactions and its safety tend to come up.Modern airliners like the Boeing Dreamliner are powered by several turbofan engines which organize a series of fans as well as turbines to compress air and ignite fuel in order to provide push.

Power Rockets/Missiles/Spacecraft

The newly patented engine of Boeing provides push in a different and unique way and as per the patent filing, the laser engine could also be utilised in powering rockets, missiles as well a spacecraft. This is one of the ideas which the engineers have proposed to power an airplane. Bio-fuels too have been in testing for a long time.

 According to United Airlines, flights which tend to run on fuel resulting from farm waste would soon begin from San Francisco and Los Angeles. These seem to be the main steps being adopted in helping to protect the environment. Up to now, the engine tends to live only in patent document and the technology is such that it is unclear if anyone would ever intend to build it.

It seems to be one of those patents which in no way indicate that the company that filed it intends working on what the patent is patenting. This is because Boeing does not seem to be actively developing a laser triggered fusion powered jet engine. Speculations are on whether the nuclear powered airplanes would become a reality or not.